Not Quite Nostalgia (new essay)
Probably the most personal thing I’ll publish for a very long time, written a few years ago: To save a … Continue Reading Not Quite Nostalgia (new essay)
Seamus Heaney, from “Crossings”
Seamus Heaney, from “Crossings” Seamus Heaney often said that, from his experience as a poet, one’s creative life followed three … Continue Reading Seamus Heaney, from “Crossings”
Seamus Heaney, from “Lightenings”
Seamus Heaney, from “Lightenings” Seamus Heaney often said that, from his experience as a poet, one’s creative life followed three … Continue Reading Seamus Heaney, from “Lightenings”
3 Poems of Adolescent Love & Hazing by Robert Lowell
Bobby Delano The labor to breathe that younger, rawer air: St. Mark’s last football game with Groton lost on the … Continue Reading 3 Poems of Adolescent Love & Hazing by Robert Lowell
The Mind as a Mountain & Creativity its Tree
A drawing from 2015 that I suddenly found again today:
Primo Levi’s Hardest Thoughts on the Holocaust
From Primo Levi’s 1986 book, The Drowned and the Saved, remembering the concentration camps: On Levi’s own—and others’—guilt at having … Continue Reading Primo Levi’s Hardest Thoughts on the Holocaust
Marc Chagall Struck by Lightning
The artist Marc Chagall, meeting his wife Bella Rosenfeld in 1909; they were together for the next 35 years: … Continue Reading Marc Chagall Struck by Lightning
When On High, When I Also Saw the Deep (poem)
Originally published at Isacoustic When On High, When I Also Saw the Deep I. When I also saw the deep … Continue Reading When On High, When I Also Saw the Deep (poem)
Hart Crane: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”
My Grandmother’s Love Letters There are no stars tonight But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there … Continue Reading Hart Crane: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”
Allen Ginsberg, “Kaddish”
I’d like to say that after Four Quartets, I don’t know of another long poem from the last century that’s … Continue Reading Allen Ginsberg, “Kaddish”
What Eliot Means to Me
(for Eliot’s essay “What Dante Means to Me,” go here) I. Late in life, T. S. Eliot hoped the essays … Continue Reading What Eliot Means to Me
